Water jumper Jan Hempel causes bewilderment and dismay with his descriptions of sexual abuse. One of his allegations is that national coach Lutz Buschkow is said to have known about the abuse for a long time. Buschkow, now suspended, now rejects this.
According to his own statement, the currently released water jump national coach Lutz Buschkow only found out about the allegations of abuse by the former world-class jumper Jan Hempel this August. “In an email request from the production company Eye Opening Media on August 10th, 2022, 3:43 p.m., in which I was told about Jan Hempel’s allegations against his trainer,” said the 64-year-old in an interview with the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung”.
In an ARD documentary entitled “Abused – Sexualized Violence in German Swimming”, Hempel made the allegations of sexual abuse against his long-time coach Werner Langer, who died in 2001, public for the first time. Accordingly, Langer had passed from 1982 to 1996 at the Olympic silver medalist in Atlanta in 1996.
In the film, the now 51-year-old Hempel accused the German Swimming Association (DSV) and Buschkow of having known about the allegations in 1997 but not having done anything decisive. According to Hempel, in 1997 he confided in the then national coach Ursula Klinger, who died in 2006. This is said to have informed the association management and the DSV trainers. “I can’t confirm that,” said Bushkov. In 1997 he was the national youth coach and sighting at the federal base in Berlin. “I did some research for myself and what I can say is that we as DSV coaches at the German Championships in Berlin in 1997 were informed in an official conversation by Ulla Klinger that due to personal differences Frank Taubert Jan Hempel will train,” said Buschkow. “We weren’t told any more than that.”
After Hempel’s statement became known that Buschkow was aware of the allegations of abuse early on, the DSV released the national coach a week and a half ago during the European Championships in Rome. The DSV board is examining the allegation against Buschkow “currently intensively”. The inspection of files carried out up to that point had given “no such clues,” said the August 18 statement.
